Before jetting off on his most recent trip to Hong Kong, I sat with Jason to answer more listener-submitted questions. This time we just happened to get questions that all centered around the lower body. So, we talk about:

* How to best work with tight hamstrings?
* How to best recover when your hamstring has been overstretched?
* How to find stability and strengthen the low back, quadratus lomborum (QL), and sacrum after pregnancy?
* What’s up with hearing about yogis having hip replacements? How can you keep your hips safe in yoga?

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5 Comments

Thank you for taking on my question..I like your view of making peace with body 🙂 I do teach so often I feel only the need to do better or be more so this was very helpful..hopefully one day I can come to one of your trainings!

Great anatomy tips, thank you. Jason mentioned reaching a plateau with hamstring flexibility and also realizing that though it was a part of his body that was relatively tight, his range of motion allowed for full functioning of his body. It occurred to me that this is not often a sentiment we hear in the context of a yoga practice. For such a long time I defined the relative health of a region of my body by my ability to do certain yoga poses, i.e. shoulder range of motion by my comfort in urdhva dhanurasana, hip flexibility by my ability to do lotus. When I started teaching, I most often got asked by students how to open a particular part of their body to facilitate more ease in a yoga pose. In many ways, the context of the physical poses is how I built greater knowledge and skillful use of my body and I appreciate what I learned from that process. But at some point it was necessary for me to make a decided transition to understand better how my body functioned in the world off the mat and what strength and flexibility I needed to support a greater range of activities. I considered it a (rare) moment of maturity when I became more accepting of range of motion plateaus taken in the context of a healthy and fully functioning body. Jason has always taught and prioritized doing a yoga pose to understand your body, not using your body to do a yoga pose. The longer I practice, the more I appreciate this. And while I have reached a plateau in range of motion in lots of areas of my body, what hasn’t plateaued is what I am experiencing when I’m practicing. I’m 10 years into my yoga practice and I have had some of the most interesting developments in my understanding of my body in the last 6 months. I’m revisiting foundational poses I’ve been doing for ages and experiencing them in totally new ways. I’m really never bored with my practice and I’m so grateful to have teachers like Jason who make the practice interesting and relevant to our life outside the yoga room. Happy holidays to you both — Looking forward to Yogaland in 2017!

nice podcast – – if it’s any consolation, forty years into my yoga practice I find myself able to do a lotus pose, a pose I never considered possible (and for that reason even a goal.) So maybe all ya need is 20 more years on them hamstrings, lol. The key is exactly what you guys iterate in the podcast – I NEVER pushed. I worked all my practice towards deeper and deeper awareness rather than greater range of motion. . . that was just a by-product. Cheers and happy holidays!

Andrea Ferretti and Jason Crandell are a husband and wife team who have been teaching, writing about, and living their yoga for nearly two decades. Andrea is creative director for Jason Crandell Yoga Method. Jason is an internationally recognized vinyasa yoga teacher. They live together in San Francisco with their full-time boss, Sofia-Rose Crandell, age 6. To find out where you can train with Jason live, check out the Schedule page.